Separating real incentives and accountability

Separating Real Incentives and Accountability

In experimental investigations of the effect of real incentives, accountability—the implicit or explicit expectation of a decision maker that she may have to justify her decisions in front of somebody else—is often confounded with the incentives themselves. This confounding of accountability with incentives makes causal attributions of any effects found problematic. We separate accountability a...

Decentralization and electoral accountability: Incentives, separation and voter welfare

Article history: Received 26 June 2008 Received in revised form 20 January 2009 Accepted 23 January 2009 Available online 4 February 2009 This paper provides a systematic analysis of fiscal decentralization on the quality of government by studying jointly its effects on electoral discipline and selection, in a settingwhere, realistically, voters only have limited information aboutfiscal policy ...

Incentives, choice and accountability in the provision of public services

Reform of the Malawian Public Sector Incentives, Governance and Accountability

Since the early 1990s, Malawi has tried to undertake economic reforms, including the restructuring of the public sector, even as it embraced democratic reforms. Paucity of human and financial resources has made the process difficult and drawn out. However, towards the end of the 1990s, the reforms began to bear fruit. Notably, the efficiency of the civil service improved, while the government c...

The Effects of Accountability Incentives in Early Childhood Education

In an effort to enhance the quality of early childhood education (ECE) at scale, nearly all U.S. states have recently adopted Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). These accountability systems give providers and parents information on program quality and create both reputational and financial incentives for program improvement. However, we know little about whether these accountability...